I posted about street musicians from our trip earlier, but some of the coolest musical bits of our trip were hanging out with my wife’s relatives. She has several uncles and cousins in England and Ireland, and a great-uncles and cousins in Scotland.
I hit a really awesome vintage guitar store in East London with one of the cousins.
Guitar Porn: top left is a ’56 Esquire with the ash tray cover. Tagged here at £13,500. That’s British Pounds, not US dollars. So multiply by 1.5 for the price in $s.
Her Great Uncle is a former world champion flycaster. And all my wife’s uncles are crack musicians. I had a nice jam session with Joe in Southern England, but our visit was pretty short. He makes his own guitars and amps. I played a customized blue paisley Telecaster (5 way switch!) with a leather pick guard (sorry, no photo) through a hand built Fender Champ style 5W amp. It sounded about as good as anything I have ever played.
In Ireland I spent a really wonderful rainy Sunday afternoon with Uncle Stewart in his home studio, where we threw down a high speed demo of a song using the power of modern computing. He played bass and keyboards, I played guitars and sang. We had a super time, and he is so wonderfully talented that it’s really just a pleasure to hang out with him, let alone play.
Both Joe and Stewart came up playing in showbands in Ireland in the ’60’s, and there is, in fact, no song Stewart does not know. Really, He knows them all. He is also an encyclopedia of traditional Irish and Scots music, and I will be working on some new songs he suggested I learn.
Here is our ‘finished’ demo. Given that we did it in one rainy Sunday afternoon, we were pretty pleased. Hope you like it.
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